UPDATE 2-Google bus blocked in San Francisco gentrification protest

By Sarah McBride

SAN FRANCISCO Dec 9 A Google Inc
commuter bus was blocked in San Francisco's Mission district for
about a half hour Monday morning, highlighting many residents'
growing concern that an influx of affluent technology workers is
driving up costs in the city.

"San Francisco, not for sale" and "Stop evictions now"
numbered among the slogans yellow-vested protesters chanted as
they surrounded the double-decker bus. Google's offices are in
Mountain View, about 34 miles (55 km) away from the incident.

The protest, organized by an advocacy group called Heart of
the City, took aim at private commuter buses which whisk
thousands of employees from stops around San Francisco to jobs
at technology companies south of the city such as Apple Inc
, Facebook Inc and Google.

Advocates of the buses say they ease traffic on already
clogged highways as workers give up driving individual cars for
the convenience of riding in the buses, which usually come with
plush seats and WiFi.

Foes say the buses jam up municipal bus stops and remove
potential customers from cash-strapped public transportation
systems, including regional rail service, that could use their
revenue.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is
proposing a set of rules around commuter buses and the use of
public bus stops, a spokesman Paul Rose said via email.

"The proposed policy balances the need to minimize impacts
on Muni with the benefits that shuttles provide by taking
thousands of cars off the street," Rose said. The agency plans
to present the proposal to its board in January. If approved, a
pilot test will go into affect in the summer, he added.

"We certainly don't want to cause any inconvenience to San
Francisco residents and we and others in our industry are
working with SFMTA to agree on a policy on shuttles in the
city," a Google spokeswoman said.

Bemused Google workers spent about a half hour sitting on
the bus until the protesters disbanded, many of the workers
sending Tweets about the incident.

"My shuttle came under siege this morning," tweeted
Alejandro Villarreal, who attached a photo of the scene as it
appeared through the bus window. Villarreal's LinkedIn profile
identifies him as a program manager at Google.

"Don't hate on me for my job," tweeted @FashionistaLab,
whose Twitter description identifies her as a style editor at
Google Shopping. "You think I LIKE commuting to Mountain View?
This protest is dumb."

A man who screamed at protest organizer Erin McElroy, 31,
was later identified as a union worker who was pretending to be
a Google employee upset at being delayed by the protest.

Increasingly, graffiti has appeared around town complaining
about the buses.

"Google scum," read one notice pasted to a light controller
at the corner of South Van Ness Street, a major artery for the
commuter buses, photographed by local resident George Lipp on
Sunday. "Keep catching your bus," read a notice on the other
side of the light controller.

The commuter-bus situation "has become very symbolic of
what's happening to the city in terms of gentrification," said
McElroy in a phone interview. "It's creating a system where San
Francisco is being flooded with capital, and creating a
technology class where other people can't compete."

Heart of the City is planning a demonstration on Tuesday
against a developer that plans to evict residents from
rent-controlled apartments, she added. The total number of
evictions jumped 25 percent to 1,716 in the 12 months ending in
February 2013, according to a report by San Francisco's budget
and legislative analyst, despite strong tenant-protection laws.

San Francisco protests against gentrification and evictions
have occurred with growing frequency in recent months.

Last month, message service Twitter's IPO sparked a
demonstration outside its headquarters.

Many residents feel left out of the technology boom and
blame it for rising rents.

The median rent on a two-bedroom apartment rose 10 percent
over the last year to $3,250, more than any other city in the
country, according to online real estate company Trulia. Rents
in greater New York rose just 2.8 percent

The current situation evokes the late 1990s, when a slew of
small Web start-ups popped up throughout the city, causing
tensions over rising rents and traffic.

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